Eduard

1/48 Airco DH2 Weekend Edition

Kit Number: 8444

Reviewed by  Scott Hollingshead, IPMS# 34786

MSRP: $19.95 Web Site: www.eduard.cz The Airco DH2 was the second plane designed by Geoffrey de Havilland, and was based on his earlier two-seat DH1. The DH2 was designed with a pusher propeller, as the British had not yet developed an interrupter gear to allow a gun to fire through the propeller's arc. The DH2 was the first effective purpose-built single-seat fighter of the Royal Flying Corps, and was meant to answer the "Fokker Scourge" of late 1915. Armed with a single Lewis machine gun, the plane first flew in July of 1915, and served until June of 1917, with a few remaining active until later that year. The DH2 was powered by a 100 Hp Gnome Monosoupape rotary engine, which could propel the aircraft up to a maximum speed of 93 mph at sea level. The range was 250 miles, with a service ceiling of 14,000 feet, and a rate of climb of 545 ft/min. The plane was 25 feet 2.5 inches long, 9 feet 6.5 inches tall, and had a wingspan of 28 feet 3 inches. Eduard previously released the Airco DH2 in kits 8093 and 8094 (profi-pack), which can be difficult to find. The big difference between the earlier kits and this Weekend edition kit is the lack of photo-etched parts, and only markings for a single aircraft being included (aircraft 7851 of C flight of the 32nd Squadron in France during 1916). There are also no directions for installing the many bracing and control wires used on the plane and that will save the builder a tremendous amount of time. I foolishly thought that I could tackle this kit as a true "weekend build", but after running across an article on pre-shading this particular plane, I spent that much time on this technique alone. Upon opening the box, you will find ninety-seven parts contained on three sprues of Eduard's tan plastic. Eduard does a very nice job with their detail, and this kit seemed a little sharper than some of the older offerings in my stash. There is a decal sheet with markings for one plane as previously mentioned, and they have a slightly faded appearance (more on this later). Finally, there are eight pages of all black and white directions. The only color drawings are on the box top art, and drawings of the left and right sides of the plane along with Gunze color recommendations on a box side panel. Constructing biplanes can be a challenge, and I have never attempted one with booms, but Eduard made this relatively easy for us. The holes for the wing struts required some light drilling, but the alignment was dead on. In what I would call a stroke of genius, the booms and their struts are molded together, and the struts are at their proper angles. My only fit issue came when attaching the fuselage to the floor (molded with the lower wing), and this required some filing to get the parts together. The fuselage itself went together perfectly, and required only some light sanding to remove the seam line. I seem to be having a bad streak with decals lately, and I am not sure if Eduard intended for their decals to act as they did or not. What happened was that the white overcoat used to produce the faded appearance wore off in some spots when I applied Micro Sol to better seat the decals. This effect is more pronounced on some decals than it is on others, but it happened to all of them. As I covered the entire decal with the solvent, and the white only wore away in some areas, I wonder if this is an expected outcome. Anyway, this is what happened to me, so now you have some advance notice if you build this kit. As far as the hits of this kit are concerned, I think that the level of detail is outstanding, and even though you have markings for a single plane, there are extra parts such as a two-bladed propeller, different ammunition holders, ammunition drums, and instrument panels that would allow the builder to make any DH2. The fit of the parts was very good overall, and although I did not tackle this in a weekend, it did build up rather quickly. My only real miss would be the "faded" decals. Although they seated just fine with Micro Sol, the odd wearing away of the top color seemed strange. I did run into a little issue with the alignment of the rudder and stabilizer on the end of the boom, but this could have been my own doing. Overall, I would highly recommend this kit to fans of WWI aircraft looking to add a pusher-propeller aircraft, or an Airco DH2 specifically to their collection. I would recommend having some experience with biplanes before taking on this kit, and realize that the actuating links on the control surfaces are individual parts (have good tweezers ready). I would like to thank the folks at Eduard for providing this review kit to the IPMS, to the review corps for allowing me to perform this evaluation, and to you for taking the time to read it.

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